Jerusalem is the capital

It is a remarkable blessing that almost every year I am able to visit Jerusalem, the world’s spiritual capital and the mother church of all Christians. Usually I am accompanying pilgrims to the holy places where Christians mark the life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

Do I feel that I am visiting the capital of Israel when I am there? My thoughts about Jerusalem are primarily biblical rather than in terms of the nation-state. Consequently, I think about Jerusalem as the national and spiritual home of the Jewish people, toward which biblical history has looked since Abraham. It was there that King David ruled over de jure and de facto. Arabs whose rights have not been respected have a legitimate grievance. Such grievances, it should be noted, have received sympathetic hearings at the Israeli supreme court.

Jerusalem belongs to the Jewish people as its capital, but it simultaneously belongs to the spiritual patrimony of the entire human race. The particularity and universality of Jerusalem reflects the particularity and universality of the vocation of Abraham, the one we Catholics call our “father in faith” during the Holy Mass. The call of Abraham was both to be the father of a great nation — the chosen people — and to be a blessing for all nations.

Particular and universal is the reality of Jerusalem, which means that it must be both the particular capital of a specific people, as well as a city open to the pilgrims of the world. That is why the Holy See’s position for decades has been rather far-sighted, namely that Jerusalem’s universal character needs to be recognized and guaranteed by some form of international instrument. Recognizing the particular does not preclude formalizing the universal.

The diplomatic ramifications of the American decision remain to be seen. Yet it seems to me that, from both a historical and religious point of view, we ought to give as much credence to the psalms — which we Catholic priests pray five times daily — as we do to UN resolutions. They are replete with testimony about the centrality of Jerusalem, confirmed by the Hebrew prophets and the Christian gospels. That is not to argue that the modern state of Israel should be coterminous with biblical Israel, but to acknowledge that it is historically and religiously impossible for Jerusalem not to be the capital of a Jewish state. What is historically and religiously necessary therefore ought to be diplomatically possible.

What should Canada do? Proceed with caution, but proceed. It should be kept in mind that Canada can hardly present itself as a model of respect for indigenous peoples if it cannot recognize the obvious capital of the most important indigenous people on the planet, the chosen people in the promised land.

I think every pilgrim who visits Jerusalem repeatedly hears at some point the venerable rabbinic saying: “When God created the world, He gave ten portions of joy to the world and nine were given to Jerusalem; He gave ten portions of beauty to the world and nine were for Jerusalem; He gave ten portions of suffering to the world and nine were for Jerusalem.”

So it has been and so it is. In the words of a biblical prayer that all can offer, Jew, Christian and Muslim, Israeli and Arab: Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!